Book Readers

Description

This is a place for those who still love to have a book in their hands to share and discuss books, reviews, and ideas. The blog is dedicated to Mum who wrote four books and more than fifty stories and other Authors. Mum passed away at 93 without seeking publication. Her books and stories range from Murder/mystery, Suspense and Romance. Her first book was published March 2008 called "Ladies of Class" a Detective, Murder Mystery story. Enjoy fellow readers!

Monday, February 5, 2018

Greece,
2017. A country on its knees due to the on-going economical crisis.

An
atrocious domestic crime.

A
missing billionaire.

A
murder/mystery hotel with an agenda of its own.

About

Captain Papacosta and Lieutenant Ioli Cara are faced
with the most complexed case of their careers. Stakes are high as their own,
police officers Alexandro and Valentina, are trapped in the hellish hotel.
Lives are on the line and the body count is on the rise. 14 guests... 13
guests... 12 guests...

Join the investigating duo on their final journey of
suspense, mystery and murder across the turquoise Aegean sea.

Grab your copy of this new, highly-anticipated,
wildly-acclaimed Greek Island Mystery and dive into the riveting end to the
series today!

Luke Christodoulou is an author and an English
teacher (MA Applied Linguistics - University of Birmingham). He is, also, a
coffee-movie-book-Nutella lover. His books have been widely translated and are
available in five languages.

His first book, THE OLYMPUS KILLER (#1 Bestseller -
Thrillers), was released in April, 2014. The book was voted Book Of The Month
for May on Goodreads (Psychological Thrillers). The book continued to be a fan
favorite on Goodreads and was voted BOTM for June in the group Nothing Better
Than Reading. In October, it was BOTM in the group Ebook Miner, proving it was
one of the most talked-about thrillers of 2014.

The second stand-alone thriller from the series, THE
CHURCH MURDERS, was released April, 2015 to widespread critical and fan
acclaim. The Church Murders became a bestseller in its categories throughout
the summer and was nominated as Book Of The Month in three different Goodreads
groups.

DEATH OF A BRIDE was the third Greek Island Mystery
to be released. Released in April, 2016 it followed in the footsteps of its
successful predecessors. From its first week in release it hit the number one
spot for books set in Greece. It was chosen as one of the best mysteries of
2016 by ReadFreely and was BOTM in the Goodread's group, Mysteries and Crime
thrillers.

MURDER ON DISPLAY came out in 2017 and enriched the
series.

Luke Christodoulou has also ventured into
'children's book land' and released 24 MODERNIZED AESOP FABLES, retelling old
stories with new elements and settings. The book, also, features sections for
parents, which include discussions, questions, games and activities.

He is currently working on the fifth book of his
planned Greek Island Mysteries book series.

He resides in Limassol, Cyprus with his loving wife,
his chatty daughter and his crazy newborn son.

Hobbies include travelling the Greek Islands
discovering new food and possible murder sites for his stories. He, also,
enjoys telling people that he 'kills people for a living'.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Written by Hollywood screenwriter David Howard and Jon Enos, and directed by Alan Peterson, TREK is a family comedy that follows a group of LDS teens as they stumble their way through the sagebrush looking for their pioneer heritage as well as their own testimonies.

Watch as Tom, a young Mormon teenager and his friends try to smuggle in unsanctioned food, battle sibling rivalry, encounter a “special ops” Young Mens leader, ponder doctrinal brain teasers, and match wits with a Twinkie-loving skunk. Through all of the ups and downs, they are revealed to be “real” LDS youth who are struggling with real challenges—doubts, divorce, relationships. When they encounter unexpected trouble, their faith is tested much like their pioneer ancestors.

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Author Wil Gesler has published a
fictionalized memoir of life growing up in a Christianmissionary
community in India

CUMBRIA, ENGLAND – Author Wil Gesler, an accomplished and now retired academic who
specialized in Human Geography and wrote numerous scholarly books and articles,
has published his first fiction book, “Missionaries and Indians” based on
experiences from his youth and travels.

“Missionaries and Indians” is a coming of age
picaresque novel filled with action, adventure and
humorous stories as seen through the eyes of 16-year-old narrator Ben along
with his twin sister Naomi. Born and raised in India as the son of Lutheran
missionaries, Gesler experienced various cultures around the world and was
inspired to share his stories in his fictionalized memoir.

Themes of tolerance and intolerance are
explored in the various relationships presented in the book such as those
between missionaries and Indians, children and their parents, servants and
masters, religious beliefs and more. The characters also experience events such
as a cyclone and devastating floods, being caught up in a political riot,
becoming a fantasy spy, hunting a man-eating tiger, and the consequences of
killing a monkey.

“Admirably, the narrator is neither a
zealot who champions his parents’ beliefs nor a cynic who questions their
sincerity. Rather, he fills the role of reporter, giving readers the space to
form their own opinions.” – Foreword Clarion Review

Wil Gesler
was born in India of missionary parents during the Second World War and was
educated there through high school at a school for missionary children. He
spent most of his working life as an academic human geographer at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Since his retirement, he has lived
with his wife in England, most recently at the edge of the Lake District.

Interview

Welcome to my blog Wil. Please tell my readers and I more about yourself and your books.

Q:

Tell us about your
latest work—title, genre, etc. — and why you wrote it?

A:

The book is called Missionaries and Indians, a play on
Cowboys and Indians, a game we played as kids, although here the Indians are
not Native Americans, but from the country of India. The
narrator, Ben, and his twin sister, Naomi, who are sixteen, are on holiday
from school and living with their Lutheran missionary parents in their home
beside one of India’s sacred rivers.
They experience a cyclone and devastating floods; think about what it
takes to be a successful missionary; are influenced by different types of
sermons; have ups and downs on a houseboat trip on the river; hear the story
of a single-woman missionary who was taken to court; are caught up in a
political riot; suffer through the illness of a little child; get involved in
an incident in which a missionary kills a monkey; listen to another
missionary teen-ager talk about being a fantasy spy; discuss sex education;
accompany a missionary on a tiger-hunting trip; and enjoy a holiday at the
beach.

The question of
genre is an interesting one for this book.
Originally the publisher, AuthorHouse, put it down as a book on
religion, but I convinced them that, although there will of course be
religious elements in a book with “missionaries” in the title, the book was
not primarily religious. After some
discussion/negotiation with AuthorHouse and the book’s publicist, we decided
that the genre was best described as action/adventure. We also decided to cast the book as a
coming-of-age narrative because teen-age Ben, the protagonist, is constantly
finding out more about life as the stories in the book are told. Further, we concluded that the book was not
a novel in the conventional sense; that is, there was not an overall
narrative arc that carried the reader from beginning to end, although some
major themes persisted throughout.
Rather, there are multiple arcs, like the contrails in the skies above
a busy airport (some of them crossing each other), as each chapter tells its
main and subsidiary stories centered around a main theme. Call the book a picaresque novel, modeled
on something like the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. When you have read all the stories, a
picture should emerge that comprehensively captures the missionary and Indian
experience.

I started to write
the book to see if I could relate some good stories about my very interesting
childhood. I wanted to see if I could
provide an honest account of what life was like for a teenager with
missionary parents in India in the 1950s.
Also, I wanted to avoid casting missionaries and Indians as either
saints or sinners, as other books have done.
As I got into the stories, I realized that there were two levels of
the writing that would be of interest to many people. The first level is the stories themselves,
which involve exciting yarns (e.g., hunting a man-eating tiger, getting
caught in a political riot), interesting settings (e.g., a very large river,
missionary houses, the local bazaar), lovable characters (e.g., Pastor
Timothy, Wally, Miss Malayalam, Uncle Eli, Aunt Emma, Uncle Jim) and not so
lovable ones (e.g., Uncle Frank, Reverend Joseph), and vivid imagery (e.g.,
the river delta as the many arms of a Hindu goddess). Then there is the level of what the stories
might mean which deals with several perennially important themes in the
everyday lives of people: evolution and change (e.g., biological evolution,
children growing up); human relationships among various groups of people (parents
and children; missionaries and servants; Indians and missionaries) that
included both tolerance and intolerance, inclusion and exclusion; fake things
(e.g., false accusations, poor quality products) versus real things (e.g.,
honesty in relationships, good quality actions), order versus chaos (e.g., in
building a church or creating a new state); fantasy (pretending to be a spy) versus
reality (knowing the spy story to be false); taking risks (e.g., climbing
around the outside of a moving train, hunting a tiger at night), sex
education (or lack of it); and religious beliefs (Christianity, Hinduism,
Islam, Buddhism).

Q:

What draws you to
your genre(s)? Why is this type of story compelling to you?

A:

I have always seen
life as a series of adventures.
Although I am a rather shy person who is awkward in social situations,
I have always felt the urge to try out new things like teaching or conducting
research in foreign countries or walking by myself in the fells (mountains)
of the English Lake District (which I close to where I live). And I like to tell stories inspired by
those adventures where I put people in a position of conflict or potential
danger, build up the tension, and then see how things work out. At the same time, I think that an
action/adventure story is a good way to dramatize an idea or theme. It gets the reader involved, imagining that
they are in the story. Also, an
adventure story is a good way of developing characters because you can see
how they behave in a stressed situation.
Say I want to illustrate some ideas about taking risks. Should one take risks? Under what circumstances? Why do people take risks? Let’s illustrate these ideas with a story
about our hero trailing along when a missionary, who is perhaps not the
greatest hunter in the world, goes off in the dark of night in pursuit of a
man-eating tiger. Why does the
missionary want to hunt the tiger? How
is our hero going to react when things get a bit sticky?